was the CTP1 worker system better?

[The Big Mc]

Well the specialist would till be in effect. You could have an entertainer in your city but you just get one less virtual worker on your tiles. If you got an engineer you can have him in the city or place him on a tile to increase production on that square.

[Gilgamensch]

Actually a question for those who support the idea:

How do you want to manage this once you reached the maximum size (of land usage)? You can hardly see which sort of tiles are there?

[MrBaggins]

I agree... this works well for 9 or 21 squares, but past that, I bet that the system would get unwieldy.

[The Big Mc]

easy we put the screen in its own window so its big and then allow you to place your farmers where you want them.

[MrBaggins]

The problem still remains that this becomes a huge job for big cities... micromanagement thats utterly unnecessary.

It'd be better to keep the existing system, but have a drop down list to specialize slightly... which change the percentage of resources that are gained for each category (I.E. Balanced = 100/100/100, Food = 110/90/90, Prod = 90/110/90, Comm = 90/90/110)

I.E. not work squares... which by its definition limits pop size to a set number of squares, but use the existing fractional gain system, plus a specialization option.

[The Big Mc]

The mayor is there to do this if you don’t want to you can specify the slide bars and the mayor will automatically juggle them about it just allows micromanagement for the people who like that thing.

[MrBaggins]

The mayors do far more than just do this. You might want to change land usage, but not change building choices and PW expenditure.

I'd consider it an entirely different setting.

I wouldn't want to have to rely on an automated setting to run a city late in the game. That sounds terribly MoO3... not a terribly good idea.

[The Big Mc]

we could possibly have a game start up option ctp land usage or ctp2

[MrBaggins]

Why bother...

Seriously... the first few worker placements might be vital, but past that they are of less and less importance... and you shouldn't be designing a game where the player is offered unimportant choices for the majority of the game.

The reason we can't just simply have two different systems in the game, is that the game is built and balanced for the abstracted worker system. Having real workers will reinforce ICS (or REX) too, I'd like to point out.

[Gilgamensch]

Or even worse, a thing I never liked in Civ III:

You just build a city with good food and you have a settler-factory (OK, not so much in CTP2, due to the higher cost) or the worst one: building a city which can hardly survive and you build military units like crazy (mainly only true for ancient units though).

And this would be another exploit by the human, or better to say weakness of the AI not able to adapt cities to specific demands.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch
OK, for this I agree, but nowadays you have instead farmers. So not so much difference. And less problems after another foreign unit trambled over your land and you had to reassign your workers..............

Originally posted by MrBaggins
I agree... this works well for 9 or 21 squares, but past that, I bet that the system would get unwieldy.

Having real workers will reinforce ICS (or REX) too, I'd like to point out.

Precisely. CtP2 system means far less micromanagement (especially since buttons for specialists could be added to the National Manager to make things even easier) but other than that has the exact same effect as the CtP1 system.

Also, the CtP2 system makes more sense historically as your people work in concentric circles around the city in CtP2, rather than in arbitray squares of which no equivalent actually exists IRL.

the CTP1 worker system is an advanced version of the CTP2 system

How is it more advanced? It's more work to manage and it gets messed up everytime an enemy unit walks by. Other than that, the effects are the same as with specialists. It's just the other way around.

its tottaly optional weather you ignore it or use it

Same for the specialists system. Except that if you choose not to use the worker system, your city's resource collection will never be optimal as AI units and the like constantly mess it up. This will never happen with the specialist system.

Just say there is resource in a cities radius that you REALLY want for some reason or another (especially when a civ3 style resource system is introduced).

In the present CtP2 system, ALL trade goods within a city radius get worked (unless they're in the outermost ring and you have a lot of specialists assigned so that the outer ring isn't being worked at all, but that's under your own control). So this is actually an advantage of the CtP2 system.

[child of Thor]

[Sorry- i had posted this in the wrong place!]


I like what Mr.Baggins is hinting at - i dont want a huge micro-management hell, nor do i want to have to resort to a 'Mayor' system(never used them as they are crazy!) when things get a bit hectic at the 15-20 city mark.

So we keep the CTP2 system, but give the player some control, mostly over resource gathering i guess. Many a time i've had to choose a worse city site because i needed a trade good sooner rather than later........

As has been pointed out, you can use the specialist workers in CTP2 to maximise things like Food and Production, so i think its just the resources that get a bit left out?

Maybe have an extra specialist for trade goods? If there are more than one trade good out of normal reach, you could get a pop-up menu to select the type you want to exploit?

[Gilgamensch]

For the trade good:

IIRC correctly it was before the release of the source-code, there was the suggestion to introduce the colony feature. Instead of having a city, you should be able to build a colony over it. Voila problem resolved

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by child of Thor
[Sorry- i had posted this in the wrong place!]


I like what Mr.Baggins is hinting at - i dont want a huge micro-management hell, nor do i want to have to resort to a 'Mayor' system(never used them as they are crazy!) when things get a bit hectic at the 15-20 city mark.

So we keep the CTP2 system, but give the player some control, mostly over resource gathering i guess. Many a time i've had to choose a worse city site because i needed a trade good sooner rather than later........

As has been pointed out, you can use the specialist workers in CTP2 to maximise things like Food and Production, so i think its just the resources that get a bit left out?

Maybe have an extra specialist for trade goods? If there are more than one trade good out of normal reach, you could get a pop-up menu to select the type you want to exploit?

Honestly, I think that having an Outpost system (very simple "cities" that can be placed that collect goods/resources- but not food/prod/gold, and/or build units or military improvements) would work better than that.

Edit... same thing as colony... btw

[hexagonian]

I prefer the CTP1 setup

The CTP2 format is definitely more streamlined, but...

What I don't like about the CTP2 system is that tile improvements are practically worthless until you are able to completely work the entire ring of terrain.

And the CTP1 setup is a big improvement over the civ2-civ3 setup because of the maximize production/growth/commerce/science buttons.